of the dispute will never be known. The settlers laid all upon Philip’s machinations, except those who lived near his wigwams and knew him best; and they said that so far from entering into a conspiracy, he always deplored the war, but was forced on by the rage and fury of the young braves, over whom the Sachems had no real power, and who wanted to signalize their valour, and could not fail to have their pride insulted by the demeanour of the ordinary English. One instance of brutality on the river Saco is said to have been the immediate cause of the war in that district. Some English sailors, seeing a canoe with an Indian woman and her infant, and having heard that a papoose could swim like a duck, actually upset the canoe to make the experiment. The poor baby sank, and the mother dived and brought it up alive, but it died so soon after, that the loss was laid to the charge of the cruel men by the father, who was a Sachem named Squando, of considerable dignity and influence, a great medicine man.
On Philip’s border to the southward, a plantation called Swawny was attacked and burnt by the Indians in the June of 1675. He is said to have shed tears (impassible Indian as he was) at the tidings, foreseeing the utter ruin of his people; and, twenty days after, Squando’s influence led to another attack 200 miles off, and this was viewed as a sign of complicity with Philip.
There was deadly terror among the English. The Indians swarmed down at night on lonely villages and farmhouses, slew, scalped, burnt, and now and then carried off prisoners to be tortured to death, and children to tell by and by strange tales of life in the wigwams. The militia were called out, but left their houses unprotected. At Newich-wannock, the farmhouse of a man named Tozer was attacked by the Indians when only tenanted by fifteen women and children. A girl of eighteen, who was the first to see the approach, bravely shut the door and set her back against it; thus giving time for the others to escape by another door to a better secured building. The Indians chopped the door to pieces with their hatchets, knocked the girl down, left her for dead, and hurried on in pursuit of the others, but only came up with two poor little children, who had not been able to get over the fence. The rest were saved, and the brave girl recovered from her wounds; but other attacks ended far more fatally for the sufferers, and the rage and alarm of the New Englanders were great. A few of the recently taught and unbaptized Indians from what were called the “new praying towns” had joined their countrymen; and though the great body of the converts were true and faithful, the English confounded them all in one common hatred to the Red-skin. The magistrates and Government were not infected by this blind passion, and did all they could to restrain it, showing trust in the Christian natives by employing them in the war, when they rendered good and faithful service; but the commonalty, who were in the habit of viewing the whole people as Hivites and Jebusites, treated these allies with such distrust and contumely as was quite enough to alienate them.
In July 1675, three Christian Indians were sent as guides and interpreters to an expedition to treat with the Indians in the Nipmuck country. One was made prisoner, but the two officers in command gave the fullest testimony to the good conduct of the other two; nevertheless they were so misused on their return that Mr. Gookin declared that they had been, by ill-treatment, “in a manner constrained to fall off to the enemy.” One was killed by a scouting party of praying Indians; the other was taken, sold as a slave, and sent to Jamaica; and though Mr. Eliot prevailed to have him brought back, and redeemed his wife and children, he was still kept in captivity.
The next month, August, a number of the Christian Indians were arrested and sent up to Boston to be tried for some murders that had been committed at Lancaster. Eliot and Gookin succeeded in proving their perfect innocence, but the magistrates had great difficulty in saving their lives from the fury of the mob, who thirsted for Indian blood, and both minister and major were insulted and reviled, so that Gookin said on the bench that it was not safe for him to walk in the streets; and when Eliot met with a dangerous boat accident, wishes were expressed that he had been drowned.
Natick was looked upon with so much distrust and aversion that Government, fearing occasions of bloodshed, decided that the inhabitants must be removed to Deer Island. On the 7th of October a great fast-day, with prayer and preaching, had been held, and fierce and bitter entreaties had been uttered against the Indian Sachems, especially Philip. One wonders whether Eliot—now seventy-one years old—felt it come home to him that he knew not what spirit he had been of when he had prayed for the death of the Moorish prince. It must have been a heart-breaking time for the aged man, to see the spot founded in so much hope and prayer, the fruit of so much care and meditation, thus broken up and ruined, and when he was too old to do the like work over again. At the end of that month of October, Captain Thomas Prentiss, with a party of horse and five or six carts, arrived at Natick, and made known the commands of the Government. Sadly but patiently the Indians submitted. Two hundred men, women, and children were made to get together all they could carry, and marched from their homes to the banks of the Charles River. Here, at a spot called the Pines, Mr. Eliot met them, and they gathered round him to hear his words of comfort, as he exhorted them to meek patience, resignation, and steadiness to the faith. The scene was exceedingly affecting, as the white-haired pastor stood by the river-side beneath the tall pines, with his dark-skinned, newly reclaimed children about him, clinging to him for consolation, but neither murmuring nor struggling, only praying and encouraging one another. Captain Prentiss and his soldiers were deeply touched; but at midnight, when the tide was high enough, three large boats bore the Indians over to Deer Island. Here they were, transplanted from their comfortable homes in the beginning of a long and very severe winter; but, well divided by the river from all suspicion of doing violence, they fared better than the praying Indians of the new town of Wamesit. A barn full of hay and corn had been burnt, and fourteen men of Chelmsford, the next settlement, concluding it had been done by the Wamesit Red-skins, went thither, called them out of their wigwams, and then fired at them, killing a lad and five women and children. After all, the fire had been caused by some skulking heathen Indians; but though the Government obtained the arrest of the murderers, the jury would not find them guilty. The Wamesit Indians fled into the forest, and sent a piteous letter:—“We are not sorry for what we leave behind, but we are sorry that the English have driven us from our praying to God and from our teacher. We did begin to understand praying to God a little.” They were invited back, but were afraid to come till cold and hunger drove them to their old abode, and then the indefatigable Eliot and Gookin visited them, and did all in their power to bring about a better feeling towards them in Chelmsford.
This whole autumn and winter—a terribly severe one—seems to have been spent by these good men in trying to heal the strifes between the English and the Indians. Wanalanset had fled, true to his father’s policy of never resisting, and they were sent to invite him back again; but when he returned, he found that the maize grounds of his settlement had been ploughed up by the English and sown with rye, so that his tribe had most scanty subsistence.
Several settlements of Christians were deported to Deer Island. One large party had been made prisoners by their heathen countrymen and had managed to escape, but when met with wandering in the woods by a party of English soldiers, were plundered of the little the heathens had left them, in especial of a pewter cup, their communion plate, which Mr. Eliot had given them, and which was much treasured by their native pastor. The General interfered in their behalf, but could not protect them from much ill-usage. The teacher was sent with his old father and young children to Boston, where Mr. Eliot saw and cheered him before he was conveyed to Deer Island. There, in December, Eliot, with Gookin and other friends, frequently visited the Indians, now five hundred in number, and found them undergoing many privations, but patient, resigned, and unmurmuring. The snow was four feet deep in the woods by the 10th of December that year, and the exertion and exposure of travelling, either on snow-shoes or sledges, must have been tremendous to a man of Mr. Eliot’s age; but he never seems to have intermitted his labours in carrying spiritual and temporal succour to his people, and in endeavouring to keep the peace between them and the English.
The hard winter had had a great effect in breaking the strength of the enemy, and they were much more feeble on the renewal of the war in the spring. The good conduct of the praying Indians had overcome the popular prejudice so much that it was decided to employ them to assist the scanty forces of
